2190 On Thermostats

Thursday, January 1, 2009

One of my many bad habits is staying up almost all night. I lose track of time. Left to myself, I sometimes I don't get to bed until 4 or 5 am.

It's a bigger problem in the summer than in the winter, because in the winter I have a programmable thermostat to help.

I have programed it to rise in the morning, stay steady during the sun hours, rise again a bit after the sun goes down, and then drop precipitously starting at about 10:00 pm. That way, by midnight it's approaching 60 degrees in here, and no matter where I am or what I'm doing, I start thinking about how warm and comfy the bed is. It works. I also sleep better if I'm cold when I snuggle into a warm bed.

There's supposed to be another benefit to dropping the temperature at night. It's supposed to save oil. (Especially important this winter. I got rooked. I prepurchased 800 gallons at what turned out to be the highest price of the year. Freakin' stuff dropped right after I signed the contract. Yeah, prepurchase. They offered a guaranteed maximum price, but that was higher than the prepurchase price, and I was SURE it was going to go up. I screwed up. Who'da thunk it would go down? Nobody saw that coming.)

Anyway, I'm not convinced a lower overnight setting does save oil.

Overnight, when the temp drops, it's not just the air that gets colder. Everything in the house gets colder. Proof is in the morning toilet seat! So when the furnace comes on, it has to not only warm the air, but everything else, too. The furnace runs steadily for over an hour.

So the question is, if the furnace doesn't run for about nine hours, and then runs steadily for an hour, did I really save any oil? Would it be more or less efficient to maintain the same temperature around the clock?

I also don't believe that setting a lower constant temperature saves much, if the difference between the inside and outside temperature is great. The furnace runs just as much, just as often, to maintain that constant. It's just that the constant is lower. If the goal is to save oil, you need to turn it on later in the fall, and off earlier in the spring, plug air leaks (including and especially the forgotten attic door/hatch), open the drapes to the sun and close them to the dark, and when you finish using the oven, open the door to let it cool into the kitchen. (Yeah, that last one's silly, but I love to stand in front of a cooling oven. I actually go so far as to use a shot glass to hold the door ajar while it presses the light switch off.)

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Teeth. Bane. My natural color is not white. As a teenager, even before smoking and coffee and daily tea, my teeth were in the middle of the dentist's color chart. It may be due to all the ear infection and strep throat antibiotics in my youth. Start that low, add smoking, coffee, tea, and juices, and they're worse, and whitening toothpastes and treatments don't seem to help.

I discovered something that does help. At home now, I drink my coffee, tea, and fruit juices with a straw. I don't remember why I started doing it, but I kept doing it because it slows me down, forcing me to sip instead of gulp, which is more satisfying, but anyway, the difference to my teeth is amazing.

I wonder if I could patent that.
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